NOAH’S ARK: The CIA’s Secret Search

Declassified CIA documents reveal a decade-long search for Noah’s Ark using Cold War spy technology, raising the chilling question: What did America’s top intelligence agency discover beneath Mount Ararat that they’re still keeping classified fifty years later?

Deep within the classified archives of America’s most secretive intelligence agency lies a peculiar document that remained hidden from public view for decades. Its title? “Report Re: Noah’s Ark.”

This isn’t the plot of an Indiana Jones film or a Dan Brown novel – it’s the true story of how the CIA spent nearly a decade searching for one of history’s most legendary artifacts.

While scientists have recently claimed to have found the final resting place of Noah’s fabled vessel, what they don’t realize is that intelligence operatives might have known exactly where to look… for over half a century.

The biblical account is familiar to millions: God commands a righteous man named Noah to construct an immense wooden vessel – an ark of enormous proportions. Into this great ship would go Noah, his family, and two of every animal kind on Earth – salvation from the catastrophic flood that would wipe clean the face of our corrupted planet.

For centuries, this account has been dismissed by many as mere mythology, a parable without physical evidence. No true remains of such a vessel had ever been conclusively identified… or so the public was told.

Recently, researchers made a stunning announcement. A boat-shaped formation located 18 miles south of Mount Ararat in Turkey – long the rumored resting place of the Ark – wasn’t just an unusual geological formation. According to their findings, it was the fossilized remains of an ancient, massive vessel.

The evidence seemed compelling. Soil samples revealed clay-like materials, marine deposits, and remnants of ancient sea life dating back to the exact era when biblical scholars believe Noah’s flood occurred. Human activity in the area around Mount Ararat from the same period was also detected.

But here’s where our story takes a sinister turn into the shadows of government secrecy…

A declassified CIA file, only released to the public in 2002, reveals something extraordinary: the US intelligence community has had their eyes fixed on this exact location since 1957. For nearly ten years, from 1974 to 1982, the agency conducted a methodical investigation of Mount Ararat using the most advanced spy technology of the Cold War era.

What prompted one of the world’s most powerful intelligence agencies to hunt for a biblical relic?

According to the documents, the order came directly from the very top – William Colby, Director of Central Intelligence from 1973 to 1976, personally authorized the deployment of surveillance assets to search for the Ark.

The operation began when Lieutenant Colonel Walter Brown, a high-ranking Air Force official, made a formal request to determine “whether any evidence of the Ark could be found.” Curiously, the documents never explain why the United States Air Force was so interested in locating Noah’s Ark in the midst of the Cold War.

What did they know that we didn’t?

With the request approved, the machinery of American intelligence sprang into action. U-2 spy planes – the same aircraft that sparked international incidents during the height of Cold War tensions – were diverted to capture high-resolution photographs of Mount Ararat and its surroundings.

But the operation didn’t stop there. The CIA repositioned surveillance satellites to examine “the glacier systems there to see whether any evidence of the Ark could be found.” These were the same advanced systems designed to monitor Soviet military movements and nuclear capabilities – now tasked with finding a biblical boat.

When later intelligence officials inquired about these surveillance missions, they were told the aerial photography produced “negative results.” The Ark, it seemed, had eluded even America’s most sophisticated spy technology.

Or had it?

What makes this story truly bizarre is what happened next. Over the following eight years, the CIA documented ten more requests about Mount Ararat and Noah’s Ark – not from conspiracy theorists or religious zealots, but from high-profile government insiders. Members of Congress, a former astronaut, and several officials from the DCI’s Intelligence Community Staff all sought information about what had been discovered.

In each instance, the CIA’s response was the same: they claimed to have no evidence that Noah’s Ark was located at Mount Ararat. Yet strangely, the agency consistently refused to release the surveillance photographs, insisting they remained classified.

When citizens later attempted to access these images through Freedom of Information Act requests, the CIA shut them down. In a 1994 memo, the agency stated they had “no efforts currently underway either to review other records or conduct additional searches for Noah’s Ark.”

The question that haunts this mystery: why maintain such secrecy around photographs that supposedly showed nothing of interest?

Fast forward to the present day. Since 2021, scientists from Istanbul Technical University, Agri Ibrahim Cecen University, and Andrews University in Michigan have been methodically studying what’s known as the Durupinar Formation – the boat-shaped mound near Mount Ararat.

In 2023, at the 7th International Symposium on Mount Ararat and Noah’s Ark, these researchers presented evidence that sent shockwaves through the archaeological community. Thirty samples of soil and rock from around the structure, analyzed at Istanbul Technical University, dated between 3,500 and 5,000 years old – precisely matching the biblical timeline of the great flood.

According to literal interpretations of the Bible, the world was submerged during the Chalcolithic period – somewhere between 5500 and 3000 BC. The scientific evidence now aligns perfectly with this ancient account.

So we’re left with a chilling question: What did the CIA really find during their classified hunt for Noah’s Ark? Did those U-2 spy planes and surveillance satellites capture evidence of the biblical vessel half a century before modern scientists “discovered” it?

In each Freedom of Information request, intelligence officials only mentioned spy plane photos from 1957 and satellite images from the initial 1974 query. Whether the US government gathered more images of Mount Ararat after 1974 – or if they had already seen everything they needed by that time – remains shrouded in mystery.

The Mount Ararat and Noah’s Ark Research Team continues their work, insisting that more study is needed to confirm that the structure in Turkey is truly Noah’s Ark. But perhaps the final pieces of this puzzle don’t lie in the Turkish soil, but in still-classified files beneath the CIA’s headquarters in Langley, Virginia.

What did they know? When did they know it? And why keep it secret for over half a century?

The truth, as they say, is out there… but in this case, it might be locked in a government vault, buried beneath decades of official denials and classified stamps… in a wooden crate right next to the Ark of the Covenant.